Translating Grutter

Abigail Thernostrom is the coauthor (with her husband, the Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom) of America in Black and White, an outstanding book on race in America. That book’s chapter on affirmative action provides a body of information that tells you just about all you need to know about the subject.
This morning the Los Angeles Times carries Thernstrom’s column on the Michigan cases decided by the Supreme Court this past Monday. Thernstrom has little patience for the the law school’s mumbo jumbo that the Court blessed and made the law of the land: “College rulings add insult to injury.”
Thernstrom discusses the black-white test score gaps that underlie the mumbo jumbo regarding “diversity.” For additional information and perspective on this point, consider this story from the Boston Globe this morning: “Justice’s ‘deadline’ confounds colleges.”
Somebody needs to tell the folks quoted in the Globe story that we all understand the “deadline” is fictitious. O’Connor doesn’t mean it any more than she meant what she had written about the law of racial discrimination in the key cases that antedated Grutter. Even if she and the four others in the Grutter majority meant it, none of them will be around in twenty-five years when the regime of double standards is, thanks to the Court, even more entrenched and institutionalized than it is now. Compare the metastasis of the abortion culture in the years that followed Roe, and the Court’s subsequent refusal to reconsider Roe’s misbegotten jurisprudence more or less in light of the reliance interests that had grown around it.
Mark Steyn likewise does a good job of translating the Supreme Court’s Michigan decisions: “Counting on diversity in court.” Steyn helpfully explains the concept of “diversity” that the Court has enshrined as a compelling state interest: “”Diversity’ doesn’t extend to, say, some dirtpoor piece of fundamentalist white trash. Her presence wouldn’t ‘enrich’ anyone. ‘Diversity’ means ‘more blacks.’ That’s why traditional African-American colleges are exempt from its strictures: As 100 percent black schools, they’re already as diverse as you can get.”